Transgender woman wins sex discrimination case.

In a “potentially groundbreaking federal sex discrimination lawsuit,” a federal district judge in Washington, DC ruled yesterday that “the Library of Congress discriminated against Diane Schroer when it offered her a job and then rescinded it after learning she was transgendered.” This case is the first to hold that “the federal sex discrimination statute, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, applies to transgendered people.” In his decision, Judge James Robertson compared Schroer’s case to religious discrimination:

Imagine that an employee is fired because she converts from Christianity to Judaism. Imagine too that her employer testified that he harbors no bias toward either Christians or Jews but only “converts.” That would be a clear case of discrimination “because of religion.” No court would take seriously the notion that “converts” are not covered by the statute.